


Four Funerals and A Wedding

by FannyT



Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Five Times, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FannyT/pseuds/FannyT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are days that affect you, for good or bad.</p><p>The Avengers all have their own ways of dealing with grief -- for those people that have been lost, as well as for those people that might yet be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Funerals and A Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> By the very nature of this fic, there will be mentions of (canonical) character death. By the very nature of the Marvel Universe, in some cases that death won't necessarily be all that permanent.

**I. Thor**

There was a general air of confusion surrounding the funeral. Loki had been so many things—trickster, orator, beloved prince, scorned traitor, the usurper king drunk with power and resentment and a wayward son looking for acceptance. In death, as in life, he refused to be neatly categorised and boxed in, and most people seemed uncertain about how to act. Thor could feel them watching him, waiting for a cue from the royal family. 

Thor stood stoic, the torch in his hand sending stinging smoke into his eyes and making him blink rapidly. Frigga's hand brushed against his, a subtle offer of comfort, but there were no tears in Thor's eyes. He had cried all he would already. 

There was no body to lay in the boat, but they had set Loki's helmet at the prow, resting on one of the pillows meant to support his head. For the funeral gifts, the dwarfs of Svartalfheim had made new and glorious weapons, worthy of a prince to take into Valhalla, and there were dolls of horses and servants and musical instruments, all for his use in the next world. And on a velvet cushion just below the helmet, Frigga had placed a braided lock of hair. She had clutched at Odin's hand as she did so, and Thor had seen his father cry for the first time he could remember. 

Beside him, Odin nodded. "It is time," he said.

Thor turned to the assembled throng. 

"Today," he called loudly, "we say farewell to our brother and our prince, Loki. May he find help to guide him to the next life, and may he go on to win prowess in the halls of Valhalla."

He paused, then, the rote words seeming trite and inadequate. 

"My brother," he began again, sensing his parents stiffen beside him but ploughing on regardless, "was a conflicted man. He was misguided and poisoned by long hurt, and he did terrible things. If he had been allowed to do as he would, there would be one less race in this great world of ours, and the Nine Realms would be the poorer for it." 

The Frost Giants were rebuilding their home, Heimdall had assured them. Thor had been in time to stop the murder of that world, started by Loki in his insanity. Still—he couldn't condemn Loki out of hand, when he himself had once entered Jotunheim with the express intent of slaughtering thousands. 

"However, I have made mistakes of my own," Thor said, continuing this train of thought out loud, "and whatever my brother's were—however large they were—he was a good man, in the end. I know that he will find his way to the feast of Valhalla. I hope he may find solace there, in that battle for glory that never ends."

He let the silence ring for a moment, and then turned and waded into the water. The boat, soaked in oil and tar, kindled easily when he put his torch to it, and he gave it a big push, steering it out to be taken by the current. 

"Goodbye, brother," he muttered to himself, and then there were more tears, after all. 

***

The funeral feast was silent—stiff and cordial, with quiet drinking and eating and not a story told. Thor sat in agony beside his parents, knowing that he had already broken decorum once and could not do so once more. To tell the first story was not for the royal household. But to sit at this feast, silent and mournful, was like a last insult to a brother whose pain Thor hadn't been able to see before it was too late. It was undignified, letting him go to his rest as if he was a craven fool, with no deeds to his name. 

Volstagg finally broke the silence. Thor would always love him for that. 

He had probably meant to be quiet, but Volstagg's voice had been made to boom, not to whisper. So it was with an explosion of sudden noise he said, "Do you remember, Thor, when Skadi was so furious, she swore nothing would ever make her laugh again? But Loki swore he could, and he took one of your goats and he tied its beard to his..." 

He trailed off, the silence creeping in like marsh water trickling under a door and stifling his words. It spread for a moment, dark and oppressive—but then Frigga let out a big "Hah!", and as the memory blossomed in Thor's mind, sunny and bright and unbelievably vulgar, laughter burst forth from him like a spring river breaking its bonds. And then Odin was laughing, and Volstagg, pleased with the reaction, guffawed like a giant, and the laughter spread and rippled softly across the table. 

The ice thus broken and the first step towards a proper funeral feast taken, Balder threw back his head and laughed his pretty, pealing laugh. "It was a sight to behold!" he said. "I thought Loki had sired his last monster for sure, but he survived to tell the tale once more. Like he always did, the tricky bastard."

"And the way he ran around the room!" Fandral exclaimed, getting up and mimicking the panicked, tip-toe dash to fresh sniggers. 

"That poor goat," Sif said, raising a sly eyebrow. "I would have backed away, too, if that had been me."

"Remember Skadi's face!" Freya called, further down the table. "She was working so furiously to keep a straight face, and then—" She stopped, snorting back a giggle, then started anew, "Then the goat _jumped_ over a bench—" 

The table exploded with laughter. Even Hogun laughed aloud, slapping his hand down on the table. 

Thor leaned back, grinning as the story unfolded. This was a funeral, a proper celebration of his brother's passing, as it should be. No one should have to cross into the next world accompanied only by sullen silence. 

Odin smiled at him, turning his head to gaze with his good eye into Thor's. He didn't say anything, but then, he didn't have to. The anxiety Thor had felt was being lifted with each fresh peal of laughter, and he knew now that his brother would be remembered as he ought. His silly, funny, sad, clever, angry, misguided, wonderful brother; the silver-tongued joker who always had a last, convoluted trick up his sleeve. 

"But the best story," he heard Fandral say, "the best trick I think Loki ever dreamed up, that involves our crown prince, the mighty Thor. Or should I say... the mighty fine Thora?"

Thor looked up sharply. 

"No," he said. "Fandral, remember that I have bested you many a time, do not believe that I wouldn't—"

"You should have _seen_ him in his bridal gown," Fandral interrupted loudly, standing up and backing away quickly, still gesticulating with his goblet. "Loki had found him the most _fetching_ of veils and although we couldn't get him to shave off his beard, we managed to coax his golden locks into a most wonderful aaaargh!"

As Thor tackled Fandral heavily to the ground, food and cutlery raining around them, as laughter stormed around him and Sif threw herself into the fight with relish, as he could still hear the most embarrassing story of his young manhood days being regaled behind him, now by Volstagg and Hogun simultaneously, Thor knew that his brother had managed to play one last trick on him. Far away in Valhalla, he thought, Loki must be laughing, laughing, laughing. 

 

**II. Tony**

Obie's funeral was an official affair. There were business partners and journalists and assorted people whose affiliation with Obediah Stane wasn't entirely obvious (but Tony suspected commonplace ghoulish excitement). 

Pepper had arranged everything, stepping in with her usual quiet efficiency when Tony crashed completely, four days after Obie's death. She had found him that morning in his work room, drunk out of his mind and telling his bots garbled childhood memories of Obediah. 

“He bought me my first single malt whisky,” Tony had slurred to Pepper, as she half carried, half dragged him back to his bedroom. 

“He got what he deserved, then,” Pepper had said, uncharacteristically bitter, and it was only later that Tony realised that she was mourning, too. 

She had put him to bed and told Jarvis to go into the usual day-after program used every time Tony went on the binge—the gentlest wake-up call and orders to the kitchen for a carefully constructed diet meant to restore water and salt balance—and she had drawn the covers over him and then, for a moment, he thought she had let her hand rest in his hair. 

He had caught her hand as she was leaving, and had asked her to stay. He had been far enough gone that everything was blurry and distorted at that point, but he still remembered her response perfectly. 

“No, Tony. We won't ever go there. You know that. You decided that.”

He wished he could have been sober enough to make out her expression at that point. Had she been regretful? Sad? Professional? (Please, god, no. Not that, at least.)

By the time he'd been himself again, she'd had everything in hand, and he sat at the funeral now, knowing that he couldn't have done it better himself. It was more than just professionally arranged, too—although official enough to satisfy the press, she had still managed to make the service both emotional and personal. It was perfect.

It sometimes frightened him, how well Pepper knew the inside of his head. 

It was a closed casket, of course. Pepper knew that Tony had always hated open caskets at funerals, and Obie's body had besides been broken and crushed beyond repair by the explosion that claimed his life. But it was also more than just aesthetics or personal preferences—as long as that casket was closed, Tony could pretend that the man inside it was that father figure of old, his friend and guardian and partner. The man he had loved, not the one who had betrayed him. 

(Not the one he had killed.)

There were reporters afterwards, digging and asking insinuating questions about everything from Obediah's death to his and Tony's relationship, and Tony wanted so much to be drunk but somewhere along the line, Pepper had removed the flask he had stuck in his suit pocket. He was annoyed, but impressed. If she ever felt like she couldn't put up with him any longer, she could probably make a decent living as a pickpocket. 

He wished for a world where he could take her hand and walk out, and go to an island somewhere and never come back to these flashing bulbs and greedy notebooks. He'd been here once before, but when his parents had died, he'd been young and angry and could get away with shouting at reporters. Now he was CEO of Stark Industries, a grown man, and he was meant to just accept that these vultures were part of his life even on this sorrowful occasion. 

Pepper's hand was on his arm, and for a moment he thought his daydream was coming true, but then she turned a politely smiling face towards him and said between her teeth, "Time Magazine, four o'clock."

She was gone in the next moment, turning away to handle an old business partner. The loss of her warmth as her hand slid away from his arm again hit him in the gut. 

Tony arranged his face—mournful, but in control—and turned to meet the journalist. 

 

**III. Clint (Natasha)**

Clint sighed, uncomfortable in his new suit and in the lie. He and Natasha had made a pact once, to go to each other's funeral, should one of them die before the other. They were both too good at avoiding things they found uncomfortable, and they had promised each other not to avoid this, at least. 

With hindsight, Clint would not have agreed if he'd known how many of those damn funerals he'd have to attend. 

This one was for Ilya Pentcheva. She had died in a car accident last week, engineered by the weapons cartel she was secretly investigating. 

(Natasha had been furious. She had sunk several years and a dreadful amount of research into Ilya. Burning that alias had been hard, but the cartel had been getting much too close and in the end there was really only one way out.)

The thing was, though, that even though Clint knew that the coffin was a dummy, he couldn't help but feel discomfited, sitting there and gazing at the photos of Natasha spread around the room and listening to her parents (SHIELD agents) sobbing in the front row. It hit a little too close to home, every time. 

The first time he'd been to Natasha's funeral had been right after he'd recruited her for SHIELD. She'd been going by her real name then—well, as real as it ever got—and seeing Natasha Romanova on the invitation to the funeral service had been wrenching. And each death since then, each burned alias and each failed mission, had twisted that hurt a little further. They all reminded him that one day, this would be real, and he would be sitting here in his itching suit knowing that for once, he wouldn't be meeting Natasha for beers later. Every one of these damn funerals brought that moment closer. It was like seeing her dying in increments. 

A heavily perfumed, tan, platinum blonde woman dropped into the seat next to him and inquired in a lazy Australian drawl if he had a program. 

"Russian orthodox," she sighed. "You have the most confusing funeral services. I can never remember which bit to stand up for."

Clint handed over his program, then hesitated. There was something about the callous exterior that gave him pause. "How did you know Ilya?" he asked.

"We knew each other from school. Used to terrorise our teachers together," the woman said, and Clint smiled at the familiar words. 

"Thought you'd have gotten bored of this by now," he murmured. 

"Going to my own funeral? Never gets old," Natasha said, tipping her oversized sunglasses a fraction of an inch down her nose and then back up. 

"I liked your look better last time," Clint said. "Mr Cooper. He was fun."

"I had to wear a fat suit," Natasha complained, her Australian diphthongs cheekily exaggerated. "This is a bit more comfortable. You know, when you said you'd go to my funeral I didn't mean you had to go to the service for every lousy alias that has to die."

"A promise is a promise," Clint said fastidiously. 

She peeled off her black, lacy gloves and let her left hand fall down beside her until it just touched his right. 

"You just come for the free food, admit it," she muttered. 

He took her hand. "You caught me," he said. 

She smiled quickly at him, then rearranged her face into the expression of slightly bored grief suiting her disguise. 

The service was long and tedious, and Clint and Natasha later agreed that her fake parents had overplayed their parts a bit, but they sat through it together, hands held tightly. He was there for her, and she was there for him, and together they allowed themselves to quietly mourn, just for a little while, the death of any kind of normal life for them. 

Then they went out for beers at a bar in Ilya Pentcheva's old neighbourhood. They had a fierce darts competition that Natasha claimed Clint won only by cheating, and they drank liberal amounts of rather dreadful ale, and when they finally left the bar, Natasha stumbled drunk and giggling straight into a group of four men and collapsed among them. She apologised profusely, talking about how she would have to blame the jetlag from Sydney which was bloody awful, they had no idea, and the men helped her to her feet, grinning at the way she leaned drunkenly into them. Finally they deposited her back in Clint's arms, and the two of them weaved their way slowly down the street. 

They stopped when they were out of eyesight from the bar and compared their hauls. Between them, they'd managed to snatch all four of the men's phones as well as two wallets. 

They bagged it all as evidence for the cartel investigation, deposited it at a SHIELD safety drop, and headed into town for some proper beer. Clint won that darts competition, too, but got his ass handed to him in pool, so it all evened out. 

It was, they said afterwards, one of Natasha's better funerals. 

 

**IV. Steve**

Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan. 

When he'd seen the full name on the invitation to the funeral, Steve had understood why Dugan had always chosen to go simply by "Dum Dum". Their squad in the army had been a cheerful and rather open-minded one, Steve had always thought, but even there you'd never have got away with a name like that as an army man. 

Steve had replied to the invitation in the negative. Journalists were starting to latch on to him now, and he was not going to have Dugan's funeral ruined by having them follow him there, surrounding him with cameras and searching questions about how it felt to outlive all your old friends. This day was supposed to be about Dugan, not about Captain America. 

So instead he had snuck out of his flat through his kitchen window, dodged the journalists hanging about the entrance to his building and made his way over to the cemetery on foot, shambling along in a hooded sweater and faded jeans Clint had given him for occasions when he didn't want to be recognised. He was currently lurking among the trees some few hundred yards away from the group around Dugan's coffin, watching the ceremony from a distance. 

Jim Morita, the only one left of the old squad now, was there in the front row. At ninety-four, he was still looking almost insultingly spry, and Steve felt sure that he'd still be chugging along years from now. In fact, with the way Steve's own life seemed to be shaping up now—what with aliens and mutant terrorists and old HYDRA agents coming out of the woodwork—he wouldn't be entirely surprised if Jim outlived him. 

Apart from Jim, Steve hardly knew anybody. Of course, he had met both Jim's wife and Dugan's piece of skirt—as Dum Dum had raucously described her, only to have Ella pinch him good-naturedly—and he had also been introduced to Pinky's husband once (Pinky himself had passed on three years before Steve woke from the ice). Tony was there, too, scowling away behind dark glasses in the back of the group with Pepper beside him, passing him a subtle handkerchief. But for the most part, the mourners were entirely unknown to him. 

It was a chilling reminder of the fact that although Dugan and the others had been such a large part of his life, he had in his turn been only a small episode in a long life filled with many different people and adventures. 

Steve put two fingers to his forehead—the closest Dugan himself had ever come to a salute—and sent a last thank you towards his old friend for all the times they'd had together, then turned and left. He strolled slowly back out of the cemetery and smiled when, making his way out of the gates, he caught sight of red hair. 

"Tony texted me," Natasha told him, straightening up from where she had been propped up against the fence, waiting. "I thought you might want to talk."

"Tony is perceptive," Steve said. 

Natasha grinned. "It surprised me, too."

They strolled down the street together, neither saying anything for a while. 

"It must be a shock," Natasha said, eventually. "I, at least, was there. I didn't have to find my friends suddenly aged seventy years—or dead—from one day to the next. People grew old around me while I stayed the same, but I could at least see it happening. It made it easier."

Steve looked at her. "Did it?"

Natasha looked back at him, then away. She smiled for a moment—but not, Steve thought, because anything was particularly amusing. 

"No," she said. "It didn't." 

 

**V. Bruce**

It had been some time since the Avengers assembled now. There hadn't been any large-scale other-worldly threats to the Earth for several years, and they had all gone their separate ways, doing what they did best on their own. They had met up here and there and they had kept tabs on each other, but it had been almost five years since they all gathered together.

Bruce had been out of the game for longer than that. The Hulk had been needed less and less as new, younger heroes joined the team—all with fresh and exciting powers of violence, chaos and destruction. SHIELD must be so proud of all their little time bombs, he thought. 

The last couple of times he'd been called in, it had been to consult as Dr Banner. That suited him perfectly. He'd been building a life in India, and to leave it for short periods of quiet lab work was fine, but he was getting too old to jump out of planes and get shot by aliens. 

He was looking forward to seeing the Avengers together again, though. He saw Tony regularly and Steve came over at least once every summer, but Thor hadn't been seen on Earth for the best part of four years and he only knew what Clint and Natasha were doing from following mystified government reports of illicit actions all over the world. He thought they'd been in Sweden recently, to go by the confused and increasingly frustrated national coverage of archive files stolen from the Azerbaijan embassy in Stockholm. Then again, the spy game was picking up again, Natasha had told him, and it might some other group of covert agents. There were more of them every year, apparently. The more global the world became and the more information was spread and shared, the more each country jealously hoarded their secrets. 

But whatever they did on their own time, now it was time for old friends to meet again. Tony had arrived four days previously and installed himself and Pepper in a disgustingly large hotel suite nearby. Steve had come the day after the Stark-Potts and now slept on a camp bed in Bruce's and Jesminder's living room. He made them breakfast and apologised to Jesminder for taking up the space every morning, because all the years he'd lived in the twenty-first century had changed some of Steve's 1940's habits but hadn't even made a dint in his polite anxiety. 

Clint and Natasha arrived that morning, landing a mini quinjet neatly behind the house as if they were simply parking a car. 

"Did you think we'd miss it?" Natasha asked, kissing first Bruce and then Jesminder on the cheek. 

"Never," he told her, smiling. "I'm worried about Thor, though. Time conversion between here and Asgard has never been entirely reliable. You remember that time we were fighting in Tokyo."

"To be fair, he made it to the after-work party on time," Clint said, following Natasha. "We all know that those are where we'd miss his company the most. All of us can fight aliens, but we always needed Thor for a decent karaoke. Hi, Jesminder. How does it feel to finally be making an honest man out of that one?" 

Jesminder laughed and kissed him hello. "He's worked with you, so I'm afraid he's irrevocably tainted," she said, because she and Clint had built their friendship around a weird structure of fond insults. "Get in there and say hello to Steve."

She put her arm around Bruce's waist as Clint and Natasha made their way inside the house. Bruce hugged her back and looked up into the sky, his free hand shading his eyes. 

"I know we're probably the only couple to be worried about this on our big day," he said, "but the sky is very clear."

Jesminder smiled at him. "He'll be here," she said. 

Bruce made a non-committal noise, still worried. He wanted Thor to come. Today was a day for family and for friends. And, of course, those who were both. 

The Avengers did see each other increasingly rarely these days. They had all been given life spans that stretched beyond the norm—Steve with his serum, Natasha with whatever equivalent her Russian spy years had given her, Tony with the technology warping his body far beyond normal human physique, and Bruce with his own mutated genes. And then of course Thor, who looked both amused and sad sometimes, when they used words like "old" or "lifetime". The only one of them still more or less human was Clint, but he was on the other hand on SHIELD's frankly intimidating medical insurance. Bruce had tried to hack into what they did in their medical bays, but had met firewalls too secure even for him. It had made him wonder about that "normal" label Clint still clung to. 

Those lengthened years meant that the time between meetings tended to stretch out, nowadays. Still, it never seemed to matter, once they were all together again. 

The sky darkened then, and out of nowhere there was a flash of blinding lightning, followed soon after by a crash of thunder that sounded almost cheerful. 

"Never mind," Bruce said, smiling with relief and joy. The five of them were the most important people in his life—bar one, he thought, feeling Jesminder's strong arm around his waist—and they would all be here for the most important day of his life. "He made it."

He smiled down at his fiancée. “Let's get married,” he said.


End file.
